Wireless is a funny thing, isn't it? We have the broadband supplier coming round on Saturday to sort out our Internet, phone and TV (not that we have one yet!) package but tonight I just randomly clicked "Refresh network list" out of curiosity, and discovered that if you sit on the coffee table, you can connect to one of our neighbours' wireless networks, which they foollishly haven't secured. So I figure as long as I'm not accessing my bank accounts (or theirs!) it's not costing either of us anything. Makes you wonder why anyone ever pays for their own Internet when every flat we've stayed in here has had free stuff being broadcast by the neighbours.
Anyway, so we're moved in and we have furniture, apart from the couch (no sign of that yet).
In other news, apparently I have been shortlisted for a 3-month job at the Department of Work and Pensions, which entitles me to the privilege of writing 600 words on the key issues facing disabled people in London by next Friday. As Jules said, "Live on the Jubilee line, or don't go out." (The new part of the Jubilee Line has disabled access to all stations, which is pretty much unique in London.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Observations on West Hampstead
According to the web and the company at brunch, our new neighbours include:
1. Stephen Fry, and
2. Chain-smoking middle-aged women who refer to the All Blacks as "bahstahds". (The UK is in a state of collective outrage over the result of yesterday's test match or more specifically the first two minutes.)
The Indian restaurant that is 0.02 miles from our house (i.e. on the corner) has an "Outstanding Achievement" award in its window :-)
From West Hampstead Thameslink station you can get trains to East London, Luton Airport, Kings Cross, the city, Elephant & Castle, Richmond and Kew.
Kilburn High Road is just not all that nice, when it comes down to it.
1. Stephen Fry, and
2. Chain-smoking middle-aged women who refer to the All Blacks as "bahstahds". (The UK is in a state of collective outrage over the result of yesterday's test match or more specifically the first two minutes.)
The Indian restaurant that is 0.02 miles from our house (i.e. on the corner) has an "Outstanding Achievement" award in its window :-)
From West Hampstead Thameslink station you can get trains to East London, Luton Airport, Kings Cross, the city, Elephant & Castle, Richmond and Kew.
Kilburn High Road is just not all that nice, when it comes down to it.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Just to prove we did get on to Centre Court...
Here is the rear view of Philippoussis at the Stella Artois.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
A home! A home! (ahem - I mean a bijou residence with roof terrace)
Hurrah! The flat hunt is at an end. But before I begin, can I just point anyone who has been complaining about infrequency of updates to the comments feature? We're easily disheartened by silence at the other end.
We are the proud tenants of a top floor flat in Gascony Avenue, West Hampstead. Well, West Hampstead is the closest tube station but the flat is almost in Kilburn really. My theory is that you can always tell when a London suburb is a bit desirable by the way it stretches across half the city. Hence you have Clapham North, Common, Old Town, South and Junction and you see flats overlooking Tooting Common advertised as Clapham South when actually they're on the other side of Balham. Likewise you have Hampstead Heath, Hampstead Village, Hampstead Garden Suburb, South Hampstead and West Hampstead. But as I said to Jules, we'd need to be training for a half-marathon before we'd be running around the heath - you'd have to run up an entire page of the A to Z to get there.
What happened was that I rang an agent about a flat in Maida Vale and he said that it was already let but he had two others similar and one in West Hampstead. So I went to have a look, thinking it's always good to be driven around by the agent.
I met Jules at Maida Vale tube at 2 and we went to see a 1-bedroom garden flat in Maida Vale for 260 a week, which was OK but turned out to be a basement flat and the garden was very small. Then we walked across to St Johns Wood and caught the tube to West Hampstead to meet the agent.
The Gascony Avenue place was a whole house that had just been entirely redecorated inside, new kitchens, bathrooms, carpet, etc. Our new residence is the top two floors. You walk in on the first floor, go up some stairs and then there's a living room, bathroom, kitchen and the smaller double bedroom plus the door to the roof terrace, which has new decking. It's probably only about 8 or 9 feet wide but quite long, easily big enough for a table and chairs and a bbq. Then you go up more stairs and the whole top floor is the master bedroom. It's all very nice and light - white walls, beige carpet in the hallways and stairs and the rooms themselves have that pale laminate flooring that looks like floorboards but isn't. Anyway it was advertised at 300 a week but we offered them 280 and they accepted so that is good. Now we are in negotiations about furnishings - basically you have to ask for what you want so we have submitted a long list - we'll see how we get on. The only thing is that they don't provide kitchen stuff but that seems to be standard these days from what we have heard.
The shower fitting in the bathroom is a bit weird and multi-directional. Jules turned on the tap over the bath and soaked the three of us - luckily it was a hot day and the agent was a fairly laid-back aussie bloke who didn't seem to mind getting drenched if it meant he met his sales targets for the week!
We move in on Monday - at least that's the theory, I'll be impressed if they get all the furniture in and put up the curtain rails and curtains by then.
And in breaking news, Jules has just been offered the job at Credit Suisse to start on 4 July. I think it is a 6-month contract. Which is exactly what would happen once you have chosen a flat for proximity to British Land! Still at least all he has to do is get on the Jubilee Line and stay on. And fourteen stops later, there he will be!
We are the proud tenants of a top floor flat in Gascony Avenue, West Hampstead. Well, West Hampstead is the closest tube station but the flat is almost in Kilburn really. My theory is that you can always tell when a London suburb is a bit desirable by the way it stretches across half the city. Hence you have Clapham North, Common, Old Town, South and Junction and you see flats overlooking Tooting Common advertised as Clapham South when actually they're on the other side of Balham. Likewise you have Hampstead Heath, Hampstead Village, Hampstead Garden Suburb, South Hampstead and West Hampstead. But as I said to Jules, we'd need to be training for a half-marathon before we'd be running around the heath - you'd have to run up an entire page of the A to Z to get there.
What happened was that I rang an agent about a flat in Maida Vale and he said that it was already let but he had two others similar and one in West Hampstead. So I went to have a look, thinking it's always good to be driven around by the agent.
I met Jules at Maida Vale tube at 2 and we went to see a 1-bedroom garden flat in Maida Vale for 260 a week, which was OK but turned out to be a basement flat and the garden was very small. Then we walked across to St Johns Wood and caught the tube to West Hampstead to meet the agent.
The Gascony Avenue place was a whole house that had just been entirely redecorated inside, new kitchens, bathrooms, carpet, etc. Our new residence is the top two floors. You walk in on the first floor, go up some stairs and then there's a living room, bathroom, kitchen and the smaller double bedroom plus the door to the roof terrace, which has new decking. It's probably only about 8 or 9 feet wide but quite long, easily big enough for a table and chairs and a bbq. Then you go up more stairs and the whole top floor is the master bedroom. It's all very nice and light - white walls, beige carpet in the hallways and stairs and the rooms themselves have that pale laminate flooring that looks like floorboards but isn't. Anyway it was advertised at 300 a week but we offered them 280 and they accepted so that is good. Now we are in negotiations about furnishings - basically you have to ask for what you want so we have submitted a long list - we'll see how we get on. The only thing is that they don't provide kitchen stuff but that seems to be standard these days from what we have heard.
The shower fitting in the bathroom is a bit weird and multi-directional. Jules turned on the tap over the bath and soaked the three of us - luckily it was a hot day and the agent was a fairly laid-back aussie bloke who didn't seem to mind getting drenched if it meant he met his sales targets for the week!
We move in on Monday - at least that's the theory, I'll be impressed if they get all the furniture in and put up the curtain rails and curtains by then.
And in breaking news, Jules has just been offered the job at Credit Suisse to start on 4 July. I think it is a 6-month contract. Which is exactly what would happen once you have chosen a flat for proximity to British Land! Still at least all he has to do is get on the Jubilee Line and stay on. And fourteen stops later, there he will be!
Monday, June 20, 2005
Homeless in a heatwave
It was 33 degrees here yesterday, the kind of weather that has London's elderly residents dropping like flies. (If only they could be persuaded to go out without their overcoats, so many lives could be spared...)
We got a day travel pass and went exploring to see if we could find somewhere other than Clapham where we'd like to live. First stop was Ladbroke Grove, on the basis that it's close to Paddington and Baker St, if Jules gets the job at British Land (which he is having a second interview for tomorrow). But we didn't take to it - it was like a concrete jungle, treeless and without charm. So we walked up the canal to Warwick Avenue (much nicer, but possibly out of our price range) and got the tube to Maida Vale. Now, Maida Vale I liked - lovely old red-brick houses and quiet tree-lined streets and there's a proper park to include in your run, the Paddington Recreation Ground, complete with tennis courts. After a brief rehydration (aka icecream) stop, we continued down to London Bridge and wandered around Shad Thames and further back towards Bermondsey. Some potential there, but pricey. And finally, Canary Wharf, where we sat outside at a pub alongside the canal and had dinner - all very pleasant.
It was too hot to sleep much in the boxroom last night. The boxroom is just bigger than the airbed - you have to squeeze around the edge of the door to get in.
Jules had an interview with Credit Suisse at Canary Wharf this morning (hence the visit to Docklands yesterday). Not a riproaring success by the sound of things - he had forgotten to turn off his mobile and it rang about 2 minutes into the interview - not the best start! But the British Land one looks quite promising - there are 3 positions and 3 people being interviewed for the second time.
I had an interview with an IT consultancy in the West End on Friday. An agent found my CV on one of the jobsites and rang me about the job, which was essentially a Bid Writer or Proposal Writer job (although the agent made it sound much more varied and interesting than that). Anyway, I went along but it sounded boring AND stressful (not a good combo) and I don't think they were convinced I was committed to a career in an IT consultancy (strangely enough). So they are thinking about it and wondering whether to risk a trial contract for no money at all (all right, I may be exaggerating) and I am hoping they decide not to.
Meanwhile, this week I have been put forward to Visa and Google, which would both be excellent being large and international and having good holidays and benefits. The job interview process at Google is a bit like joining the secret service - you get interviewed by a total of 8 people, on 3 separate occasions. Then they have to send off to the US for approval to hire you. I was gutted to discover that Google wouldn't consider me for a "creative maximiser" role (don't ask because I don't know) because my degree was not from one of the UK's top five universities. So I looked up Otago online to see where it ranked worldwide but unfortunately it is between 200 and 300 so not particularly stellar. Hmf.
Ah well, time to trot off to the bottle store as it is just the sort of evening on which a pink pinot grigio would go down a treat with the tennis.
We got a day travel pass and went exploring to see if we could find somewhere other than Clapham where we'd like to live. First stop was Ladbroke Grove, on the basis that it's close to Paddington and Baker St, if Jules gets the job at British Land (which he is having a second interview for tomorrow). But we didn't take to it - it was like a concrete jungle, treeless and without charm. So we walked up the canal to Warwick Avenue (much nicer, but possibly out of our price range) and got the tube to Maida Vale. Now, Maida Vale I liked - lovely old red-brick houses and quiet tree-lined streets and there's a proper park to include in your run, the Paddington Recreation Ground, complete with tennis courts. After a brief rehydration (aka icecream) stop, we continued down to London Bridge and wandered around Shad Thames and further back towards Bermondsey. Some potential there, but pricey. And finally, Canary Wharf, where we sat outside at a pub alongside the canal and had dinner - all very pleasant.
It was too hot to sleep much in the boxroom last night. The boxroom is just bigger than the airbed - you have to squeeze around the edge of the door to get in.
Jules had an interview with Credit Suisse at Canary Wharf this morning (hence the visit to Docklands yesterday). Not a riproaring success by the sound of things - he had forgotten to turn off his mobile and it rang about 2 minutes into the interview - not the best start! But the British Land one looks quite promising - there are 3 positions and 3 people being interviewed for the second time.
I had an interview with an IT consultancy in the West End on Friday. An agent found my CV on one of the jobsites and rang me about the job, which was essentially a Bid Writer or Proposal Writer job (although the agent made it sound much more varied and interesting than that). Anyway, I went along but it sounded boring AND stressful (not a good combo) and I don't think they were convinced I was committed to a career in an IT consultancy (strangely enough). So they are thinking about it and wondering whether to risk a trial contract for no money at all (all right, I may be exaggerating) and I am hoping they decide not to.
Meanwhile, this week I have been put forward to Visa and Google, which would both be excellent being large and international and having good holidays and benefits. The job interview process at Google is a bit like joining the secret service - you get interviewed by a total of 8 people, on 3 separate occasions. Then they have to send off to the US for approval to hire you. I was gutted to discover that Google wouldn't consider me for a "creative maximiser" role (don't ask because I don't know) because my degree was not from one of the UK's top five universities. So I looked up Otago online to see where it ranked worldwide but unfortunately it is between 200 and 300 so not particularly stellar. Hmf.
Ah well, time to trot off to the bottle store as it is just the sort of evening on which a pink pinot grigio would go down a treat with the tennis.
Friday, June 10, 2005
Pong…pong - how the unemployed spend their days
Five gruelling days of jobhunting later, Jules has a telephone interview on Thursday for an actual job (albeit a permanent one) and I have two interviews lined up with agencies. And somehow we dragged ourselves away from the phone and internet connection to go to the tennis at Queen’s Club on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon so it hasn’t been all gloom and doom.
The tennis at Queen’s was a great experience – we only had to queue for about half an hour and we got to see some great matches. On Wednesday we got charity returns (i.e. 5-quid resold tickets) for Centre Court and watched Lleyton Hewitt and Mark Phillipoussis lose at speed to Bjorkman and Mrinyi. Since then we have been watching on TV and even Wom is getting quite into it.
We have been to see two flats. The first was through an agency, in a mews complex. It was a nice modern two bedroom flat which would have been fine, except that it was (gulp) 300 pounds a week and because we don’t have jobs the agency would require 6 months rent in advance. Which, in case you were wondering, is about 9000 pounds once you include 6 weeks bond! So we thought we wouldn’t do that, on reflection.
The second one was a raised ground floor flat on Grafton Square, which as the owner said repeatedly, is the street in Clapham. It was a very small one-bedroom flat for 265 per week. The kitchen and bathroom and bedroom were all fine but the living room was small and somewhat grotty – ancient grubby carpet and only one non-fold-out couch. However, it did have an amazing garden. You went down some steps from the kitchen onto a decent-sized lawn, a paved area with six-seater outdoor table, and behind that a moat with goldfish, a little bridge and a fountain at one end, then behind that a raised brick area with two sunloungers. There was also a beautiful resident cat – the people who own the flat own the whole house and have recently moved out of the raised ground floor flat into the upper stories after having a baby but the cat still seems to live downstairs.
So we dithered about it, decided that we could cover up the grotty carpet with a rug and get a few potplants, and finally texted the guy to say we liked it but we would need a table and he texted back to say fine – dining or coffee? Then this morning Jules got a call from an agent about an ‘excellent contract in Cambridge’ and I started to have fantasies about an actual house, where I could lie in the garden all summer waiting for my husband to come home with a sack of cash. So in the end Jules has been put forward for the job in Cambridge and we turned the flat in Grafton Square down. To be fair, it wouldn’t have been any good for visiting relatives.
Tomorrow we are off to Potters Bar to see Geoff and Heike, who have rented a 4-bedroom house. Hopefully that will be good positive reinforcement of the decision not to move into a shoebox! But if anyone else has anything helpful to say at this point we’d like to hear it!
Monday, June 06, 2005
Good nosh in Notting Hill
Jobs applied for: 3; Response from agents: 1 (general, not job-related). Jules: 4, 1.
In more cheery news, we went for a pub walk through Notting Hill and Holland Park with London Walks on Saturday night. I didn’t go with high expectations but we all had a great time. The general idea is that you turn up at the tube station at a certain time, pay your £5.50 and trot around the neighbourhood with a guide who tells you all about the history of the area and takes you to a couple of tiny, tucked-away, old pubs that you wouldn’t have found on your own.
In the course of the walk, we learnt where the phrase ‘daylight robbery’ comes from. We came upon a large square house on a corner, with all the windows on one side bricked up. The story goes that at one time in London, there was a tax on clocks. The obvious drawback of this was that it was very hard to tell how many clocks someone had in their house. So the government decided to tax windows instead, because at least you could count those from the street. Objecting to the idea of having to pay for daylight, Londoners bricked up windows left right and centre, especially those in the upper floors where the servants slept. What seems weird to me, though, is why, having bought your £2 million mansion in Holland Park, you wouldn’t put the windows back in now. Apparently nobody wants to look across the street into their neighbours’ house, but surely a simple net curtain would fix that? But no, apparently it is better to have a dark and dingy house. All right, perhaps not dingy exactly, at least not in Holland Park…
We also learnt that before street numbering, all invitations to dinner included an illustration of the fanlight over the host’s front door. All the fanlights in the street would be different, and the host would light the front hall so guests could see which house they had been invited to. Now a lot of the fanlights are pretty similar, but in some areas of London, like Bloomsbury Square, the old fanlights have been preserved – must remember to go and have a look.
One pub we visited was called The Windsor Castle, because when it was built you could see Windsor Castle from upstairs. Not a chance of that now!
After the pub walk we went to a nice little European-type restaurant, where I had a french onion soup and a chocolate mousse. Mmm.
Speaking of food, I now know why we got fatter last time we lived here. You walk into Sainsbury's Local and it is just full of ready meals and donuts. And the vegetable section is full of empty plastic bins, where the few vegetables that came in in the morning used to live. As Jules said, with 4 jam donuts costing 45p, why wouldn't you buy them?
Today I saw a fantastic-looking job at a website with the slogan "The London guide for Londoners". Then I found out it is based in Ashford in Kent! Honestly! Still apparently that is only an hour from Charing Cross so I might apply. I only hope that's not an hour by Eurostar or it could prove uneconomic!
Friday, June 03, 2005
Consuming in Clapham
We've spent 48 hours in London, and so far I am loving it. The temperature is somewhere in the low 20s and the common is green and beautiful.
Donald came to meet us at the airport and we asked after our boxes, only to be told that they can be picked up on a Wednesday between 9 and 3. (It was then a Wednesday at 7 pm.) Otherwise you could pay someone to deliver them so we did that and they arrived this morning looking like they had been thrown from the plane. Jules blacked out the 'in good condition' part of 'received in good condition' where you had to sign for them, and they didn't like that but really! One box was completely split down the side. But still everything seemed to be there and the laptops still work so that is good.
Wom was relieved to be liberated from the box and is resting on the couch waiting to return to his normal shape. He still has that lopsided look, and an accusatory glare, but is otherwise uninjured.
We went out to a tiny local pub called the Tim Bobbin in the back streets of Clapham that night that we arrived, which was lovely. Donald said he didn't have any food in the house and he wasn't kidding. Contents of fridge: 6 bottles of Stella Artois, some cans of coke, brandy mince pies with an expiry date of 3 Feb, baby carrots and beans with an expiry date of 3 April (and white tufts), some gherkins and a large block of Dutch cheese from Amsterdam (unopened). As he said: 'I seem to have become a bit of a typical bachelor'. So the next night we cooked steak and bulk vegetables, which will hopefully prevent scurvy setting in.
Yesterday we went up to Tottenham Court Road and got new mobiles. Jules of course had asked Steve which mobile was the one to have and Steve had recommended this beast of a phone that costs £600 and yet is not diamond encrusted or anything that you might expect for that price. I had to put my foot down and he ended up with a £70 phone instead. Then we had lunch at Nando's and wandered about noticing what had changed in Clapham. A very bizarre feeling standing at Clapham South, where the old hospital building has been demolished and is being replaced by a massive Tesco's. How many supermarkets do the residents of Clapham South need, one asks?
This morning we went for a walk around the Common before breakfast and Jules began his Bierodrome campaign early, with success, as we are just heading off there now.
Next week the job and flat search will begin in earnest.
Donald came to meet us at the airport and we asked after our boxes, only to be told that they can be picked up on a Wednesday between 9 and 3. (It was then a Wednesday at 7 pm.) Otherwise you could pay someone to deliver them so we did that and they arrived this morning looking like they had been thrown from the plane. Jules blacked out the 'in good condition' part of 'received in good condition' where you had to sign for them, and they didn't like that but really! One box was completely split down the side. But still everything seemed to be there and the laptops still work so that is good.
Wom was relieved to be liberated from the box and is resting on the couch waiting to return to his normal shape. He still has that lopsided look, and an accusatory glare, but is otherwise uninjured.
We went out to a tiny local pub called the Tim Bobbin in the back streets of Clapham that night that we arrived, which was lovely. Donald said he didn't have any food in the house and he wasn't kidding. Contents of fridge: 6 bottles of Stella Artois, some cans of coke, brandy mince pies with an expiry date of 3 Feb, baby carrots and beans with an expiry date of 3 April (and white tufts), some gherkins and a large block of Dutch cheese from Amsterdam (unopened). As he said: 'I seem to have become a bit of a typical bachelor'. So the next night we cooked steak and bulk vegetables, which will hopefully prevent scurvy setting in.
Yesterday we went up to Tottenham Court Road and got new mobiles. Jules of course had asked Steve which mobile was the one to have and Steve had recommended this beast of a phone that costs £600 and yet is not diamond encrusted or anything that you might expect for that price. I had to put my foot down and he ended up with a £70 phone instead. Then we had lunch at Nando's and wandered about noticing what had changed in Clapham. A very bizarre feeling standing at Clapham South, where the old hospital building has been demolished and is being replaced by a massive Tesco's. How many supermarkets do the residents of Clapham South need, one asks?
This morning we went for a walk around the Common before breakfast and Jules began his Bierodrome campaign early, with success, as we are just heading off there now.
Next week the job and flat search will begin in earnest.
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